Save You Tonight
by The Fall Of Starry Nights
Summary: Sherlock swore he was fine and not precisely in love with John before Moriarty swanned into his life and made him fake a suicide. And now he's not so sure about anything. Because everything has changed. One-sided Johnlock.


Sherlock does not want to lose John.

He does not want John to marry Mary, a woman he doesn't know, a woman who was here when Sherlock was not and how did it even happen?

It is ridiculous that Mary, who is clearly parsimonious with the love and affection she doles out, will be bonded to John legally, now and forever.

/

But Sherlock dies again and again each day, waiting for John, waiting for something that will never materialize.

/

He didn't _expect _that he and John would get married.

He didn't _expect _that they would date or kiss or cuddle or do anything remotely romantic with each other.

Sherlock _knew _it wouldn't happen.

/

But.

_But._

He also _didn't_ expect that John would move on. John didn't have a life outside of him, didn't want to leave this city of flames and fire and excitement, the exotic city that kickstarted life inside of you and made you look at life with love tinted glasses, but, wait, that was just Sherlock consenting to give up his disciplined mind and give into feelings previously browbeaten into dormancy (oh, did he say _beaten_?), and even that's not quite true because he's falling, tumbling down, spiralling out of control and plummeting from grace all over again and everything he's known; his expression now is just reflected, shattered, lying on a bathroom floor staring back up at him in the pieces of a crystal chandelier.

/

Sherlock/John

just/merely

wanted/desired

to/to

fall/become

in/besotted

love/to

John/Mary

and/and

be/spend

together/forever

forever/together

/

Sherlock dies again and again each day, waiting for John, waiting for something that will never materialize. He keeps looking at John, even though John will never look at him back.

/

_I will hold you close, value you and cherish you; now and forever._

_I am taking you to be my life partner, and I will neither desert you nor cast you aside. _

_I would have that we experience a lifetime of immeasurable love, that our bond transcends and eclipses death._

_I would have us always walk together, and that our footsteps always lead us in the direction of light. _

Dramatic and nonsensical, yes, but if Sherlock had to recite a marriage vow to John, he would recite this in a heartbeat.

/

Mary's smile looks just deceptively fake all throughout the wedding ceremony (Molly hisses quietly at Sherlock, "Stop being so dramatic; they're in _love_" when he tells her).

Does no one else see how collected and aloof Mary is, just assume that she mirrors John's disgustingly besotted expression?

And, oh god, now they're saying _I do_, and Sherlock feels like his entire body is submerged, drowning, in ice cold water.

/

Sherlock dies again and again each day, waiting for John, waiting for something that will never materialize. He keeps looking at John, even though John will never look at him back. He heard once, when he was but three or four, that if you repeated a word over and over again it would lose its meaning; so far, although he was repeated John's name over and over again, like a broken record stuck on loop, it has lost no meaning.

/

As soon as the ceremony is over:

Everybody is clapping, and smiling, expect for one pathologist and consulting detective.

"Are you ok, Sherlock?" Molly asks him, and he knows that she thinks he looks just like he did before he asked her to help him fake his death.

He rolls his eyes. "I'm _fine_."

Molly's expression:_ But we both know you're not._

Sherlock's response to that, in expression: _No, but we'll pretend I am, and you'll pretend you don't know how I feel._

She sighs, and squeezes his arm, and they walk out together but part as soon as they step over the threshold of the church doors.

He and Molly are two roads alway diverging but destined to meet up again, and he suspects he will be spending a lot more time in the morgue pretending it is perfectly natural to wile away his time there with a cup of dark coffee that he will leave untouched. He will pretend it is normal that he interacts with Molly more now that his flat is arid, monotonous, dead. Devoid of John, and therefore devoid of life.

/

Sherlock dies again and again each day, waiting for John, waiting for something that will never materialize. He keeps looking at John, even though John will never look at him back. He heard once, when he was but three or four, that if you repeated a word over and over again it would lose its meaning; so far, although he was repeated John's name over and over again, like a broken record stuck on loop, it has lost no meaning. He tells Mycroft this in more discreet terms, and his brother says, "Unrequited love is the curse of a lonely heart". Sherlock rolled his eyes and told Mycroft to sod off, but it stayed with him all through the first week post-marriage, and he wondered if he should smile because John was still friend, because he was happy, or if he should cry because John would only ever be his friend and be happy with someone else.

/

"Did you ever truly love him?" Mary asks Sherlock, when she comes to visit him a few days after the wedding. She claimed she wanted to visit, but he wonders if she sees him as competition.

The detective thinks, _Bitch. _in response to her question. His wounds are ragged, half healed; does she get off on ripping them back open?

They look at each other, and it is truly amazing, Sherlock remarks silently to himself, how devastatingly loud the silence is with everything he is not saying.

Then Sherlock inquires: "Did _you _ever truly love him?"

"Does it matter?" She raises an eyebrow. "Now that I have him, I am not letting him go. I will _never_ let that happen."

/

"Do you love her?" Sherlock asks John one day, when they are in between cases at 221B (John's _real _home, Sherlock remarks to himself with more snark than usual).

"Love who?" John is baffled and looking at Sherlock with a confused turtle face.

Sherlock huffs and rolls his eyes and snaps, "You know damn well who I'm talking about."

John just rolls his eyes and stands up and heads over into the kitchen, reaches for his cup than withdraws his hand and stands still for exactly ten point five seconds before replying. "She's my wife."

"That," Sherlock says back curtly, "is not what I asked you."

He closes his eyes and revisits his Mind Palace to make some renovations, and does not notice at all when John sets a hot cup of tea on the table next to the couch (next to Sherlock) and then leaves with nary a goodbye or a promise to come round later.

He touches the tea hours later, a lukewarm cup full of liquid he doesn't want. He drinks it anyway.

Mrs. Hudson plays Cluedo with him after dinner - "For old time's sake," she says - and Sherlock wonders if he should ask her if he and John had a "little domestic". He doesn't bother because she invites Mrs. Turner to come play with them too and the latter is so boringly conventional Sherlock deletes everything he knows about her after approximately a minute of her in the flat.

/

Sherlock dies again and again each day, waiting for John, waiting for something that will never materialize. He keeps looking at John, even though John will never look at him back. He heard once, when he was but three or four, that if you repeated a word over and over again it would lose its meaning; so far, although he was repeated John's name over and over again, like a broken record stuck on loop, it has lost no meaning. He tells Mycroft this in more discreet terms, and his brother says, "Unrequited love is the curse of a lonely heart". Sherlock rolled his eyes and told Mycroft to sod off, but it stayed with him all through the first week post-marriage, and he wondered if he should smile because John was still friend, because he was happy, or if he should cry because John would only ever be his friend and be happy with someone else. Either way, his heart is ready to disintegrate.

/

Sherlock dreams that he overdoses one evening, when he falls asleep in the kitchen. He jolts awake and he stares at the cupboard where he used to hide his needles, his drugs.

_Could I?_

He wonders all the time now, somewhere in the back of his head where all the dark things lurk.

/

John comes to 221B with an English bulldog. Sherlock stares at the wrinkled puppy with confusion and indifference while it stumbles over itself in trying to run around the cluttered flat.

"What do you think I should name him?" John asks, smiling at the puppy, and settles down into his usual chair.

Sherlock shrugs - he doesn't care; it's an _animal, _they take up resources and time and affection, and this one takes up John's precious time, affection, attention, and takes him farther away from Sherlock - but he says offhandedly, "Gladstone."

The detective throws himself onto the couch and pulls his legs up to his chest, wraps his robe around a bit tighter.

"Gladstone?"

"Nineteenth century chemist."

"Ah."

John doesn't say it, but Sherlock can hear the amused _Of course_, at his suggestion.

/

The puppy responds to the name Gladstone, and seems to take a liking to Sherlock.

He pretends to hate the dog, but shows it affection when John isn't looking.

Sherlock once considered using the dog as part of an experiment to test a vaccine to a poison, but he finds it a tedious, pedestrian way of retaliating at John's marriage to Mary.

/

Sherlock dies again and again each day, waiting for John, waiting for something that will never materialize. He keeps looking at John, even though John will never look at him back. He heard once, when he was but three or four, that if you repeated a word over and over again it would lose its meaning; so far, although he was repeated John's name over and over again, like a broken record stuck on loop, it has lost no meaning. He tells Mycroft this in more discreet terms, and his brother says, "Unrequited love is the curse of a lonely heart". Sherlock rolled his eyes and told Mycroft to sod off, but it stayed with him all through the first week post-marriage, and he wondered if he should smile because John was still friend, because he was happy, or if he should cry because John would only ever be his friend and be happy with someone else. Either way, his heart is ready to disintegrate.

All he can conclude from this business of love, is that for all the forlorn lullabies of tongue and pen, these are the most wretched: _It might have been._

/

Sherlock goes to the room where he first met John, and stands in the spot where John first saw him.

Then he goes to sit on a stool, the same one upon which he first saw John.

_Right there where he stood . . . is holy ground_, Sherlock muses.

Nothing is the same, but it is _all_ the same as it once was.


End file.
